Journalist Nicolae Chicu spent years uncovering Russian disinformation and influence operations in his native Moldova, the strategically located neighbour to Ukraine and aspiring member of the European Union now facing an election that may determine whether its future lies in Brussels or under Moscow’s sway.
He unexpectedly became part of the story himself this month. Chicu was the latest high-profile Moldovan to be targeted by hackers who took over the YouTube channel he had built up to become one of the country’s most watched.
Chicu’s investigation into the activities of Russian security services in Moldova: deleted.
His dig into candidates he suspects of only pretending to favour EU membership in order to split the vote: deleted.
RM Block
The interview in which Moldova’s top pro-EU politician, president Maia Sandu, told him Russia had spent $200 million to influence Moldovan politics last year: deleted.
“All my stuff that I was doing through my platform was to counteract the disinformation coming from Russia,” says Chicu, who is wearing a neat beard and black jeans in a chic exposed-brick hotel lounge in capital Chisinau.
Chicu, who is 28, is part of a generational shift in Moldova in favour of integrating with the EU. “I believe Moldova’s future is in the European Union.” Nearby, the government building that once housed the headquarters of Soviet Moldova is now bedecked with a vast EU flag.
Polls suggest the electoral race is tight, and the pro-EU Party of Action and Solidarity may struggle to form a majority as it fends off a challenge from the Patriotic Electoral Bloc, a pro-Russian left-wing coalition of parties that opposes EU integration.
“It’s an election that decides the fate of the nation,” says one EU official. “The Russians are investing quite enormously in this country of 2.4 million people to push them off their European path.”
Moldovan officials have accused Moscow of orchestrating a complex vote-buying system akin to a multi-level marketing scheme over the messaging app Telegram, with voters offered payments in exchange for votes and commission for those who recruit others. Authorities had issued 25,000 fines for such vote-selling as of July.
Priests from the Moldovan Orthodox Church, which is subordinate to the highly politicised Moscow Patriarchate, are accused by Chisinau of using the pulpit to spread the message that joining the EU would mean a loss of family values and national identity.
Deep-fake videos, made with artificial intelligence, have proliferated. In one recent hoax, a video made to look like it came from the ministry of education showed two men kissing beside a child, with the announcement that lessons about “tolerance” would begin in September. Other viral videos in circulation claim the EU will saddle generations of Moldovans with debt, or draw the country into the war next door.
“Moldova is a testing ground for the Russians when it comes to disinformation,” says the EU official. “Many of the things they later roll out in other EU countries are tested there first.”
Senior Moldovan civil servants, members of government and other prominent journalists have described a spate of hacking attempts targeting them as the election draws near.
Establishing with certainty who is behind a hack is often, by its nature, difficult. States typically conduct cyberattacks through intermediaries, including criminal groups, that work with varying degrees of independence and direct control. For this reason, attribution often relies on motive and circumstance: who was the target, and what was the context.
Moldovan security sources agree with Chicu’s conclusion that he was targeted by a Russian-sponsored hack. “That’s their modus operandi,” says Chicu.
He sees it as part of the information war he covered on his channel. “The aim of the Russians is to occupy this country by changing the outcome of the election,” he says. “They have figured out that trying to buy minds is cheaper than waging a war.”
With help from Gmail and YouTube, Chicu has managed to regain control of his account and restore his deleted videos. They are now live again.
The Russian government did not respond to a request for comment, but has denied such practices.
For its part, the Russian foreign ministry has accused Moldovan authorities of “brainwashing” its population to support European integration and seeking to suppress the overseas vote of the Moldovan diaspora that lives in Russia. It says allegations of Russian influence in Moldova are part of a “Russophobic campaign”.
“Moldova is being groomed to become the next Ukraine,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a briefing this summer.
An economic minnow, Moldova shares a 1,200km border with Ukraine, a third of it controlled by the breakaway pro-Russian region of Transnistria. Moldovan and EU officials believe Moscow is pursuing a friendly government in Chisinau so that it can use Transnistria as a base for its war with Ukraine.
They expect the election on September 28th may either make or break the country’s ambitions to join the EU.
Moldova made rapid strides towards membership since it elected Maia Sandu president in 2020 and awarded her reforming, pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) a landslide majority in parliament in 2021.
This came despite heavy-handed economic pressure from Moscow, including a sudden freeze of Russian gas supplies and a ban on the vital Moldovan export, wine, that were seen in Brussels as attempts to coerce the country against taking a pro-EU path.
The once-moribund idea of expanding the EU to include new member states was dramatically revived by the invasion of Ukraine, which underlined the stakes and revived political will.
Seeing a window of opportunity, both Ukraine and Moldova have raced through the initial stages, comparing 100,000 pages of EU law to their own national statute book to identify what reforms they must enact.
Ahead of the election, the EU’s commissioner for enlargement travelled to Moldova with a message: that if Moldova elects a pro-EU government and continues on its pace of reform, it could become a member by 2030.
“We made a plan with your prime minister, it was a kind of bet. Is it possible that Moldova can finish the negotiations within my mandate?” Commissioner Marta Kos, who will be in office until 2029, told a Chisinau audience this month.
“I see the possibilities, because I see how dedicated you are.”
Obstacles lie ahead. Partly due to their long shared border, Moldova and Ukraine are currently considered by most EU leaders to be a “package deal” that must join the bloc together. Ukraine’s membership is currently being vetoed by Hungary, and therefore de facto Moldova’s as well.
A recent Eurobarometer poll showed public support for enlargement within the EU to be shaky, with an overall majority of 56 per cent of those polled across the 27 member states in favour, but ominously large minorities in Germany and France against.
Nevertheless, it is easier for small countries to join the EU than larger ones, and EU officials believe it is possible for Moldova (population 2.4 million) and other frontrunners Albania (2.7 million) and Montenegro (population 600,000) to all join the bloc by 2030 if they enact the reforms required.
On the other hand, if pro-Russian parties win a majority in parliament for the next four years, Moldova may miss its chance.
“Please go and vote, and tell your families, and tell your friends, and tell everybody,” Commissioner Kos urged her Chisinau audience. “The future of Moldova is in your hands.”
